


Drive

by Chanter



Category: Pandemic (Board Game), Young Wizards (Diane Duane)
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Dreams, Ethics, Gen, Inspired by Fanfiction, character backstory, consensual mental conversation, references to World War II, spot the nods to other fandoms, stealth wizardries, subtle heroics, vivid imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:14:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25772653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chanter/pseuds/Chanter
Summary: "You are not a murderer," something--someone--says.  "Do you see?"  Kerrigan doesn't, entirely, beyond the obvious elements in play here, but you're not supposed to make that much sense out of dream logic anyway, are you?Kerrigan, unconscious on the office floor, dreams.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Drive

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Fomites](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8889973) by [brittlestars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brittlestars/pseuds/brittlestars). 



Kerrigan dreams in full color. 

Kerrigan dreams she has six arms, six eyes, and six bat wings patterned over their sails in the colors of the flag of Eire. 

Her extra eyes are yellow. How she knows this - and yet, she does - is a mystery. Her extra arms are as human as her other limbs, and the clothing she barely spares attention for accommodates them, as well as her wings, in a profusion of sleeve holes and seams. 

She's wearing a uniform in a soft green that looks like Brae's hills from the middle distance. She's wearing a set of clean scrubs. She's wearing a uniform, blue over black and flashed with three gold pins at the collar's right side, that she may have seen before, somewhere, years ago. She's wearing a business suit in sober navy. She's wearing a soft wool sweater and corduroy trousers both last seen in the back of her closet at home. She's... not honestly sure just what she's wearing, and somehow it doesn't matter all that much so long as she's decent for the office, does it? 

Kerrigan drops through a universe of pink soap bubble clouds and geometric shapes in pastel and icy blue, watches candyfloss white cirrus cloud streamers go by, counts all seven sides of the oilseed flower yellow figure that careers past her nose in an innocent, two-dimensional tumble, and time has no meaning at all. Kerrigan does not hit the floor, somehow, as she falls into awareness like slotting into frame, but she is abruptly on a floor, and she's not quite sure how she came to be standing upright. 

Kerrigan holds a palm-wide sword in the second of her right hands, its blade liquid-shining silver from tip to hilt and patterned in a scrolling periodic table's worth of elemental symbols, its grip solid marble, red and white, cold from disuse and etched all over with, she finds on a swift glance down, hair-fine chiseled strands in both paired and single spirals. DNA meets RNA, she thinks, go figure. She's no more certain of how she wound up holding a sword than she is of how she landed on a solid floor. Well, she tells herself, anyway. Nothing but to get to it. 

Get to what, she's not sure. Something, certainly, she reasons, or she'd not have thought it in the first place. 

Kerri's never fenced in her life, never even held a sword before this nebulous when, but the weapon she's working with now feels as natural an extension as a pen or a stylus in her hand. 

"This is not the Answerer," says a voice she doesn't recognize, somewhere in the back of her mind. "This is a watersword. The marble is Algerian. The North Africans and the Irish are rising in objection to the forces of entropy. The partisans are calling for the absence of blood." 

Well, doesn't that just give her gooseflesh and a thrill she can't figure? If this is a dream, it's a bloody odd one. Strange, though, how she's nowhere near up to classifying it as bad. Get to it. 

Kerrigan lunges forward, note-perfect, anchoring her left heel to the flagstones of the floor and bending her right knee just so as she thrusts, and somehow, some way, the foil she's wielding makes the sound of a blade withdrawing from a scabbard as it pierces empty air, right up until the moment it contacts the outer membrane of her sudden, stationary enemy and punches through with conviction. 

"This is not a phoenix kerambit," says the voice in the back of her mind, the same voice as before--was that a second ago? "any more than it is another's broken oath against harm. It is a defense of, and not a cause of, those who are, and would, and will be wounded. It is a literalism." 

Two halves of one blackly red virus hit the floor, bloodless, and vanish. 

Ah. Well then. Get to that. Evidently her subconscious is having its own private little war--get to that. 

"You are not a murderer," something--someone--says. "Do you see?" Kerrigan doesn't, entirely, beyond the obvious elements in play here, but you're not supposed to make that much sense out of dream logic anyway, are you? 

Her blade scours itself in a burst of blue-green light that does not blind her any more than it frightens her. Straight in the chalice's mouth, she thinks bemusedly, fondly, and this time, the mental voice speaking the words is an ancient relative with liver-spotted hands and clothing too faintly recalled to denote gender markers, and you will heal. Anyone says 'drink from the loving cup' and they're a fool simplifying things for the English. Kerrigan snorts, and the sound is a match to the sweet-tempered cream draft mare her father kept, not so many years ago now, for determinedly old-fashioned farm work in County Wicklow. Kerrigan's boots look - one glance, a quarter second or an hour - like RAF kit, not horse's hooves, but her hair whips for just a moment in a wind that doesn't exist. The corners of her mouth turn up. 

She looks, completely as an afterthought and entirely out of nowhere, for the light source that must be present nearby - she can, after all, see- and finds none either above or behind despite the darkness shrouding the ceiling and each far wall. She just as quickly forgets to be concerned with the lack. Dream logic, after all. 

She turns, instead, on one steel-capped toe, quite unlike any ballet dancer ever seen, plants her right foot, this time, on a glass-smooth solid patch of absolutely nothing at all and runs a second viral adversary through with an upward-forward motion that's too fast for even her own eye to follow. It disintegrates, never touching her, but it reeks of evil until its dust disperses. All of Kerrigan's wings are motionless, extended rigidly from her shoulders. They are not applauding, she thinks. The play's not over. She does not smirk, much as she suddenly, briefly wants to at the memory of a little-loved Latin teacher's lectures from once upon a time, but the dark humor of the idea tastes bitterly sour on her tongue, and it lingers. 

"You are not a murderer," repeats the voice in the back of her brain. "You are the opposite. Certain oaths, plural, need not be yours for that reality to fit you. Now do you see?" 

God, she thinks, the world must really be going to hell in a basket of fish. I'm even dreaming about the things we deal with all day, with a great dollop of wishful thinking atop the lot. Can't get any stranger, I suppose - she almost laughs, almost lists to one side, almost feels her eyes burn with exhausted tears. Almost feels someone benevolent, somewhere, frown. 

"You are not intended to be tested to destruction," says that voice, somewhere, somewhen. "Lifeprice is a last resort, not an expectation." They sound this side of sharp, this side of a sabre's edge. It... helps. Kerrigan has barely a flicker of an articulated idea why that's so, beyond the vague churchbound recollections of the difference between being jealous of and jealous for someone, and the much more intimate knowledge of anger at one's enemies as audible to one's friends. No, she does not see, blast it all, but her eyes have stopped burning, at least. That's no small something. Get to it, damn it, Kerrigan, get to-- 

"You are not intended to be tested to destruction." 

Kerrigan's sword is still glowing watery green-blue as it's arcing left to right to left again, protecting her forward view even as she's climbing, sudden and effortless, up an invisible something that sounds like a metal stepladder's treads beneath her feet. Two more viruses end as a result, briefly haloing her blade in what might be ozone, might be steam, before the purifying light its emitting washes the contamination clear. Kerrigan's center right arm feels no fatigue. Where did I get the idea to climb? she wonders. Oh well, not like it's hurt me. Hurt them, the enemy, yes, but not me. I must hurt the enemy. I must destroy the enemy, or the human race is doomed. 

"Aid growth and guard life," says the unfamiliar voice (still not her grandparent) in the back of her mind, "and change no system unless the system of which that growth is a part is threatened. Then act with conviction. Virus, mutation, water in circulation, wider human body. Do no harm, but also allow no harm. See what I mean?" 

And that's... well. Yes. That's a bit closer to where Kerrigan lives, it's true, even if the particulars are still about as clear as a mud puddle. 

Thirty blue and green technicolor fish swim past Kerrigan's eyes. There is no water for them here or at least, she's not inhaling any of it, but the sound of splashing is still definitely coming from... somewhere. Don't hurt them, she insists to herself, and keeps her weapon firmly in what feels, to her untrained body and mind, like some sort of awkwardly-executed guard position. Don't you dare hurt them. You neither need nor want that. You're not out for them any more than they're out for you. 

"You are a guardian of justice and an instrument of protection," the unknown voice in the back of her head says as the fish exit stage left and disappear as suddenly and completely as they arrived, "as well as an independent, sentient being in your own right. To save the world, it is not necessary to destroy it. To save the world, it is necessary to fight. As you do. As you have done, and continue to do. Now do you see?" 

A single virus lunges in from nowhere, occupying a space that was, for all Kerrigan's senses could tell, open air a moment before. Viruses can't lunge, part of her insists, any more than they can snarl like cartoon monster menaces, but this one's doing both until her near-automatic jab silences it in a burst of grey-white television static. That was harder, somehow, in motion and action; the audibility, she thinks, was the difference. Defense, Kerrigan. You were fending it off. It was trying to kill you, and you were defending, yourself or whoever this is--one, two, three rainbow-shaded butterflies sail by, hand-sized and innocent and still, somehow, roaring like a trio of cartoon lions in procession, and Kerrigan moves on none of them. Tenses up, yes, looks at them askance and plenty, but her sword doesn't rise. And somehow, somehow, that helps too. 

"You are correct that this is not a weapon of violence," the voice in the back of her head explains or, perhaps, confirms. "It is the ferocity of a healer whose patient is threatened, whether from without or within. It is the clean tenacity of the best in the profession. It is the defense and protection of both the innocent and the guilty. It is the chalice, dancing." 

And doesn't that last comparison just make sense, too? 

Kerrigan's wings creak like tree branches as they engage as one. They move suddenly, without her conscious effort or direction, and their actions synchronize immediately and perfectly. Kerrigan spares a microsecond to be impressed with herself, does not smack herself in the face with sword hand or any other hand for the pride - come on, you, you didn't even put them there - and then forgets as she rises like the most self-directed wine bottle cork in the world, heading for a ceiling she's entirely unbothered to note is still in deep shadow. 

"This weapon's wielders," the voice in the back of her head - and she still can't name it, can't even assign a likely sex to it, let alone an origin - "number among the righteous of the multiverse's history." All but her feet are in shadow now, because whatever's been shrouding the assumption of a ceiling hasn't, it turns out, been hiding an actual roof, and the air surrounding her isn't stopping her seeing her own body, but in function beyond that, it's acting almost like cloud. Kerrigan looks down, sees blurred light and little else, glances up again. Twenty cubes of rainbow glass, smoothly flat on every side and absolutely prismatic despite the lack of light to set them off, tumble past her. Not one comes within a handspan of her, but every one rattles like an oversized die all on its own. Dream logic, she thinks bemusedly, and keeps rising. 

"As do you," says the voice in the back of her head, as the light from whatever source exists below her begins to recede into the relative distance. "You are a defensive weapon, Kerrigan Theresa Callahan. Some who wield the watersword are doctors, some are medics, many are healers. Some are pilots, scientists, children. You yourself, as others like you, are honed with the skills of your profession and innate nature. You wield, and you are, a sword seeking the opposite of life's end. You are as potent--" scores of human and alien faces flash past her mind's eye, her internal eyes, not her dream's own functioning eyeballs, too fast for even first impressions of features to linger "--a weapon as any gun. Better, though." Kerri blinks, strobe dazzled and grasping at half glimpses, and somewhere else on the moderate side of the hazy nearby, a bell starts to ring. 

Pauses. Rings. Pauses. 

Stars and sequins start to streak past her, trajectories varied; some aim downward, but some are most definitely traveling sideways with deliberation. Kerri can't sort out which is going where, gives up trying, almost laughs before the handbell's jangling intrudes again. Or is it a handbell? Is it a church tower? Is it a railroad station's blaring signal? Is it a-- 

"You are a sword, Kerrigan Callahan." The voice in the back of her head isn't confining itself any longer, or isn't it really? It might be all around her, or maybe it just feels that way. "Drive." It sounds approving, or is that explanation? I have the strangest dreams, she thinks to herself, and something benevolent chuckles close at hand. Or is that far away? The echoes of words and laughter all vibrate on her skin like sound waves from a record player, and above her, in the daylight, something thumps one, two, three in firm succession, then splinters with a crash, and a-- 

Well, that was sudden. 

Telephone keeps ringing. 

She does not surface with a splash. Kerri's not entirely convinced she shouldn't, from the sound of displacement her mental ears supply. But there's no water on the floor, and she-- 

Oh, shite. Telephone. What the hell? How did she get on the floor? Is she on the floor--yes, those are absolutely her desk's front legs, and nothing else feels quite like industrial carpet on the cheek--Kerrigan groans, regrets it instantly. What's that pink scrap of a thing--oh, shite. 

"--no fever, no rash, no evidence of infection that I can detect, unless this is something new--but I think she's coming out of it," someone says, and this time Kerri can peg probable sex, even if it's not a voice she's heard before. Somebody else swears, fast, vehement and in about three languages, and Kerri takes a full five seconds to pick the English and French for 'thank God' out of the medley. The skin at the back of her hand is caught between soft, gloved fingers, tugged just barely, let go. "Miss," insists the first voice--male, likely-- "Ma'am? Ms. Callahan. Can you hear--wait a minute!" 

Ooooh, hel-lo. That attempt to get up will not be ranked among Kerrigan's brightest of ideas. Not if she lives through this disaster. Not if she lives to be seventy. 

Somebody snorts a startled laugh, and it's not her. "I think you should be grateful you don't speak Irish, Dr. Van Der Stouwe," says a second voice, this one probably female. "Or maybe you do speak Irish, which means your partner can probably lend you something to wash your ears out later--Ms. Callahan? Kerrigan?" That's Justine, with the handful of medical certs and the love of obscure anime, from two offices down the corridor. Kerri blinks sandpaper eyelids, as the throbbing in her head--well, that's not new, is it?--redoubles and something tightens around her farther arm with an all too familiar repetitive hiss. "Oh, hang on--" Justine gets louder for a second, which doesn't much help either element of the situation. "What'd you say your name was? L'americaine. American, over there. End that bloody call before all our ears fall off, please. We've got her, alright?" 

Another unfamiliar voice stutters to silence, no words formed. The telephone on the table obligingly shuts up. 

"The hell happened?" That's a croak, no bones about it. Kerri's cursing herself this time, because that's lackluster, Callahan. Do better. At least the blood pressure cuff's deflating. "Bloody--what the?" 

"You passed out from low blood sugar," the likely male says, frank and no little bit relieved, by the tone of his is that a Nederlander or a Vlaanderen Belgian accent? and under the circumstances, Kerrigan can't even entertain the thought of blaming him for the relief. "It looks like some dehydration as well. Judging by these readings and everything I can see, you have had a crash coming for days. I'm not going to ask when you last had anything to eat that wasn't biscuits with your coffee." Ah, there's doctorly - healer, supplies her brain, out of nowhere and yet not out of nowhere at all, doctor, medic, healer, scientist, righteous and fine - disapproval. 

"Coffee's foul," she protests anyway. It's feeble, and she's willing to bet that everyone in the room except maybe the American--how did an American get in here? knows it's a weak-arsed deflection. "I never drink the stuff. Tried it once at university, not about to give it a second go. Sooner not blow my credibility further." 

"It's a good thing I won't be asking you to drink any coffee, then," Van Der Stouwe says. "Or any tea, if that's what you prefer. This, on the other hand, I will be asking of you, if you'll try to sit up first? Not too quickly," he adds, sharp, "or you'll likely fall on the floor again." He's got a plastic bottle full of something violently apple green in one hand (his skin is much darker than her own, she notices, and his hair's black where it hasn't gone candyfloss white - is he Moroccan-Dutch? oh hush, you nerd), held steady enough that the French for 'electrolyte' stays in focus long enough to be read. Well, that figures just as much as it makes sense. 

The telephone on the tabletop shrills again, just as Kerri manages to lever herself up and over into a sitting position. By the feel of things, her elbows and left hip may not forgive her for some time, but at least they don't stage a collective revolt and drop her back onto the rug. Justine hisses a French swear word through suddenly clenched teeth as the first phone ring dies, then jangles into a second. "I said stop calling up, please? You're in the room, you know what's happening, why are you still--" 

"It's not me!" yelps an American accent. "I wouldn't be that stupid." Kerrigan's frankly not willing to take that bet, given the defensive hints in the masculine-sounding denial, but doesn't voice the fact. "It must be somebody from outside." 

Justine huffs air out through her nose, carefully avoids Kerrigan's protruding feet, and snatches up the handset just as Dr. Van Der Stouwe presses that bottle of electrolyte solution into Kerrigan's unresisting fingers. "Hello, bonjour, je suis la--pardon? I--English, yes? This is the office of--yes? Who did you say is calling, please? You are where? And you are looking for what person? Just a moment. Wait just a moment, please." 

If that's Dr. Tsukanova calling up again - Kerrigan's got the drink's lid halfway to twisted off, even though her fingers feel like so many sprung rubber bands, but she pauses, then lowers that bottle until it stands free and upright on the floor. "Who is it, Justine? Koltsovo? Is that a translator at the Vector Institute? If I knew how to say we're working on the thing in Russian, I'd out with it right now. Save a lot of headache." 

Justine turns, beaded braids spilling over her near shoulder as her far hand muffles the telephone's mouthpiece. "Non--no, I don't believe he is a translator at all, but he says he works with a diplomatic service? He says that his name is Raúl, that he has extremely important information, and that someone who works in this office will know that he can be trusted to tell the truth when he gives it. Somebody who works here is married to his--" the barest of confirming-a-word pauses, "auntie? His Tatie Isabella is married to a person named Jean? Jeanne? Jan?" 

Click. Pink cloth square on the office floor, flight to Russia, auntie, of course that's his wife's name, cathedrals and moldy saints and oh good lord meaning for lives and deaths and didn't he say he had a nephew who was a driver for-- The single syllable falls out of Kerri's mouth as nothing short of a yelp. "John!" 

"Oh no you don't." Dr. Van Der Stouwe gives her a quick, hard look that's got approximately a shed load of sharp, savvy concern visible at its heart, which is most of the reason why she doesn't haul her arse off the floor in one. She does reach for the telephone, reaches hard and far, finds a plastic bottle being tapped none too subtly against her palm instead. 

The watersword is the tenacity of the best in the profession. The watersword is the ferocity of a healer whose patient is threatened, from without or within. 

Kerrigan tries, at least, not to groan in frustration. Confines herself to cussing under her breath. Takes that bottle back, and twists the cap the rest of the way free with her slightly-shaking off hand. "Give me thirty seconds--" Van Der Stouwe's pinning her with another look. Righteous. Dammit. "One minute. Tell them to wait for one minute, please. Sixty seconds on the wire. Talk to them yourself if it'll help you or them, and thank you, if I forget to say so later on. Sixty seconds, no longer. Then I'll take the call. Give it to me here, if the cord reaches." 

Her mouth's as dry as cliche cotton wool. The first gulp of that shockingly green sports drink is an oddly-flavored relief. So is the second, and the third. Van Der Stouwe is nodding at her, and he hasn't objected to her one minute timeline (or her lack of grace about that timeline) yet. Righteous. 

Drive, Kerrigan thinks, as Justine flashes a thumbs-up, speaks into the telephone, goes quiet, then replies to something said at the other end before pausing to listen again. Take the phone call from the office floor and deal with the American after - drive. 

The plastic bottle is three quarters empty. The phone cord is spooled out almost to its spiraling limit, but the receiver's in Kerrigan's hand, at Kerrigan's mouth and ear. Drive. "Hello? Yes, John isn't here at the moment, but he's my assistant. Yes, I'm his boss. My name is Kerrigan Callahan. ... You wouldn't believe the details, but you can trust that I am absolutely sitting down just now. It might be best if you started from the beginning..."

**Author's Note:**

> The credit for this entire thing goes to Brittlestars. If you haven't read their absolutely excellent work "Fomites", it's completely worth a look, and not just because without it, this story will make zero sense. :) Kerrigan, Hiroki, John, Raúl and Dr. Tsukanova are their characters, and I've written this fic with permission. The details of Kerrigan's backstory and surname (ahem!) can be blamed on me. 
> 
> As to allusions, or at least some of them: A phoenix kerambit is a non-canon weapon from Homestuck fandom. It's meant to deliver a dribble of healing when used. Yes, that means what it sounds like it means. Three gold pips on the collar of a blue uniform denote a Starfleet officer with a commander's rank, in either medical or one of the other science departments. Otherwise, if it reads like a Young Wizards reference, it very probably is. If it reads like a World War II reference, it also very probably is.


End file.
